City of Residence:
Minneapolis, MN
Occupation:
Imam of Masjid An-Nur / Professional Life Coach
Excerpt:
“God says that He has made you different that you may know one another, that you may come to know one another, you know? The best of you, is the one who is most conscious of God. So, not that I’m looking to be better than you or that, but to know, to know you, but to also acknowledge you too, you know, because we can know things, and depending on disposition, we won’t acknowledge them. But this language, and, scripture says to know and to acknowledge, you know? So this is simply what we’re trying to do. So it takes shape as interfaith dialogue, or some community project we might do together, a trip to Jerusalem, some other kinds of, Thanksgiving prayer services, things of that nature, it takes the form of that, but what I tried to lay out just a moment ago, was kind of what the aim is behind all those things. That’s how they express themselves, but that’s what, this is what we’re aiming for, so to speak.
Over the course of time up to now, we’ve seen that morph, and emerging leaders, men and women in Islam, here, that have really allowed for us to, “us” meaning the Muslim community, to really, to grow, and to change, and to take form in ways that I would say twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago would have been hard to imagine.
I think that the influence here is beginning to expand a little bit, and when I say influence, not in a coercive kind of a way, but an idea of that we’re being included in the discussion, about matters, issues that matter, not only to Muslims, but also to others, in that particular way, so all these things, that’s been my experience, like a very marginal one, to really, the sky’s the limit right now, in that particular way, and I’m an optimist by nature, maybe, you know, but I think that our future is great, here in Minneapolis, and even the work that IRG, for example, is doing, I mean this historic project that they’re working on right now, this, you know, these are things that, that we couldn’t really think about, we couldn’t fathom this.”
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